This is a sociological study of physician-patient relationships in primary care with particular emphasis on current patterns of public challenges to physician authority. It will attempt to support or negate media reports that patients are questioning medical recommendations, demanding accountability, and in general no longer offering doctors unalloyed trust. Semi-structured interviews with stratified random samples of primary care physicians and the public in metropolitan, urban, and small town settings will provide data to test the hypotheses that client age, general education, and health education, as well as method of payment, (prepaid versus fee-for-service), will explain variability in the criterion of acceptance/rejection of physician authority. This dependent variable is conceptually distinct from compliance/non-compliance and satisfaction/dissatisfaction, and has not yet been studied empirically. The analysis will utilize various physician characteristics, and additional patient delivery system characteristics, as controls. The medical context has been selected for study as a prototype of professions, on the grounds that verified authority challenges in this case portend changes in authority relations in society in general, as well as providing important implications for future organization of the health-care delivery system.